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Nyomi Tarpley wears a pi shirt, which expresses the ratio’s approximate value, while eating a slice of pie Friday at Martinsville Middle School. The school celebrated Pi Day on Friday by holding fun and educational activities. (Bulletin photo by Mike Wray) |
Monday, March 17, 2008
By PAUL COLLINS - Bulletin Staff Writer
Students at Martinsville Middle School were focused on pi Friday.
That’s pi, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, not pie, the dessert most folks love to eat.
It was Pi Day. Schools, colleges and lovers of mathematics around the world celebrate it. In the United States, Pi Day is celebrated on March 14 (3/14) because, rounded-off, pi is equal to roughly 3.14, which means that if you draw a straight line through a circle (the diameter) and multiply that by roughly 3.14, you will get the distance around the circle (the circumference).
Pi, which usually is abbreviated to 3.14 or 3.1415926, actually has millions of digits.
One of the culminating events at MMS’ Pi Day was a pi bee — bee as in spelling bee, but in this pi bee, the winner was the student who recited, in the correct order, the most numbers of the pi ratio. Kiana Dillard won the pi bee by reciting more than 100 numerals. She is a student in Kathy Carter’s sixth-grade math class. The bee was held during an assembly for part of the student body, about 200 students who qualified to attend.
Earlier in the afternoon, Kiana recited 106 digits of pi during Carter’s class. In an interview, when asked how she memorized all those digits, Kiana said she would learn several at a time, rehearse them over and over, then go to the next group of digits and rehearse them, etc. She said she thought the Pi Day activities were fun and will help her with measurements.
Students said other Pi Day activities in Carter’s class included learning that pi is a Greek letter, learning the meaning of pi, naming as many circular things as possible, learning about how pi can be applied in real life, making T-shirts with the pi symbol, making bar graphs showing the frequency of each digit in the pi ratio (for example, how many times 1 is used, etc.), making “pi quilts” (drawings with colorful rectangles for the various digits in the pi ratio), making pi bracelets (with color-coded beads for each digit in the correct order), and other activities, including eating sweet potato, pecan and strawberry pies.
Carter’s student Helen Martin said, “I learned that learning can be fund if you do it the right way.” Her favorite activity was making a T-shirt with the pi symbol, she said.
Carter’s student Erika Millner said: “It helped me learn how to find a circumference of a circle.” And that could be helpful, she said, “if I ever need to measure something for fabric.”
Another of Carter’s students, Ashleigh Buck, said she learned that it takes a little more than three diameters to make a circumference. So how will that help her? She said that she wants to be a veterinarian when she grows up, and knowing about pi “will help me make a real good circle” in making pet beds.
She said she also enjoyed making pi quilts and coordinating the colors and numbers in proper order.
In Debbie Vaughn’s sixth-grade math class, students measured the diameter and circumference of an apple pie, which the class got to eat later in the period. Monifah Green recited the first 95 digits in the pi ratio; students made pi quilts; and they sang Pi Day songs, among other activities.
Monifah and student Guadalupe Corona said they both enjoyed the activities.
Angilee Downing, the instructional coordinator for MMS, said the Pi Day activities not only provide fun ways for students to learn a mathematical concept and applications that can be useful to them in the future, but the activities help them “internalize” it, or remember it better, through hands-on activities. Also, she said the activities will help reinforce some of the principles students need to know for Standard of Quality tests. So in general, activities ranged from such things as, in sixth grade learning what pi is and the value of pi; in seventh grade, measuring the circumference of a circle; and eighth grade, building three-dimensional cylinders and cones and measuring surface and volume.
Tamra Vaughn, the school’s math coordinator, said that pi has many practical applications such as measurements and engineering.
MMS’ Pi Day had moments of pure fun too. For example, there was a pudding pie-eating contest between faculty and students. Lillie Moreland, a science lab teacher, won. Also, there was a pie-throwing contest in which about seven students got to throw pies at about seven teachers — all in fun of course. |
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